Positano: Southern Italian Soul in a Tel Aviv Landmark

The scent of wood fired dough reaches you before you even step through the arched entrance. A warm breeze rolls through the open courtyard, carrying notes of basil, garlic, and something sweeter from the pastry station inside. At a corner table beneath the stone facade of Beit Weiss, a couple shares a plate of burrata so fresh it pools across the ceramic like spilled cream. Somewhere near the bar, a Negroni catches the candlelight. This is Positano on an ordinary Wednesday evening, and there is nothing ordinary about it.

Opened in June 2023 inside one of Tel Aviv's most storied buildings, Positano occupies the ground floor of Maison Weiss, a heritage structure built in 1909 by Akiva Aryeh Weiss, one of the city's founding figures. The building stands at the corner of Herzl and Ahad Ha'am streets, its restored facade a quiet monument to the earliest days of Tel Aviv. Where Weiss restaurant once served diners under these same ceilings, Chef Gil Dahan now leads a kitchen devoted to the flavors of southern Italy, filtered through the lens of Israeli dairy cuisine. Dahan, whose resume includes stints at Kitchen Market and Cena, was nominated for Promising Chef in Israel, and his approach here is one of disciplined respect for the southern Italian canon rather than reinvention.